


i don't blame you dear, for running like you did all these years

by redlightwarning



Series: coda [1]
Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Mild Concussion, Post 1x17: Going South
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3470759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlightwarning/pseuds/redlightwarning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Come on,” he says. “Let Dr. Curtis work his magic.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>It’s a testament to how wretched she feels that she doesn’t protest as he leads her towards the rear end of the plane and pushes her down to sit on a table, takes the chair facing her.</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Because there's no way Happy survived the episode without experiencing some kind of brain trauma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't blame you dear, for running like you did all these years

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for the wonderful [Katie](www.happyquinn27.tumblr.com), who I have been lead to believe is celebrating her 14th birthday today.
> 
> I hope you have the wonderful birthday you deserve and that 14 finds you happier, wiser and more fulfilled than 13 ever could. Again, we haven't been speaking for very long, but each and every single one of you girls has had a huge impact on my life, and I hope you all continue to do so for a very long time. You're a truly lovely person, Katie and even though we have not met, I'm sure your smile thoroughly lights up many lives as your steady presence does mine. Happy birthday, sweetheart, and remember to eat an extra slice of cake on my behalf.
> 
> All my love,  
> Megan x

The pain begins to set in when they’re all safely back on the jet and they’re all working through an adrenaline crash. It starts off as a little twinge in her temple that she’s only half aware of, but it grows with the gentle motion of the plane until it’s more akin to a dull roar behind her eyes that flares with every beat of her pulse. It’s all she can do at 30,000 feet to rest her head in her hands and close her eyes, use the waves of discomfort to keep track of time passing.

“Hey,” Toby says as he nudges her with his foot because of course he’s not going to let her struggle through in peace.

She opens an eye, moves just enough that it could probably be considered acknowledgement if you squinted a bit and turned your head just so. Toby watches her with that calculating gaze of his that freaks her out.

“You okay?”

She gives him a look before she closes her eyes. She wants to roll her eyes at him a little, or maybe glare for always being so _involved_ but her head feels like a tower of jelly about to slide off her shoulders and melt into the floor, so she leaves him be.

Seconds later, there are hands on her, pulling her up by her wrist and a wrapping around her waist. She maybe makes an impatient sound because Toby is shushing her even as he leads her away from the team.

“Come on,” he says. “Let Dr. Curtis work his magic.”

It’s a testament to how wretched she feels that she doesn’t protest as he leads her towards the rear end of the plane and pushes her down to sit on a table, takes the chair facing her.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, his hands coming up to tilt her head this way and that as he eyes the swelling at her hairline.

He doesn’t look pleased, a distracted frown curving across his face and Happy wonders, not for the first time, what he sees, if he sees people the same way she sees engines and machinery; if his patients are a checklist of broken rusty parts to be welded back together and polished before everything is as good as new.

“Happy?”

She blinks and he’s looking at all of her now, not just her blue-black bruises.

She gives a shrug that feels less concerned than she intends it to.

“Tired,” she eventually says. “Headache.”

“Yeah? How many times were you hit?”

She glares at him for that but she’s forced to abandon that when it sends a quick shriek of agony lancing through the pain so she kicks him instead and it’s a small victory when he grimaces, voice tight and teeth clenched as he mutters to himself before he’s moving on, seemingly content without an answer.

“Any confusion? Nausea? Dizziness?”

Happy tries to shake her head but he’s got two fingers pressed firm against the pulse in her throat and she’s mostly not ashamed at the way her heart flutters when his hands are warm and heavy and intimate against her. She clutches at his wrist and sinks into the sticky sweetness of his gaze and the way it binds the space between them, considers drowning.

It takes her longer than it should to notice the direction of his stare has dropped well below her eyeline and she can feel heat crawling up her spine before she catches up again, her brain sluggish and lazy in a way that only sex and alcohol usually afford. She can’t tell if it’s the concussion or his attention that’s causing it this time.

“S’not gonna mean much at this altitude, doc,” because of course he’s trying to measure her breathing by sight and _god_ , she sounds maybe as dazed as she feels and the pain really isn’t fun, but with his hand at her jaw and her fingers around his wrist, she’d probably take it, for a little while at least.

“No, but it’ll make me feel better,” he confesses.

It makes something soft and warm and heavy bloom in her stomach and settle into the bones of her. She shifts beneath the weight of it.

“Any loss of memory or balance?”

Happy shrugs.

“Would I know? With the memory one?”

Toby huffs a laugh and his breaths fans out warm across her face, his thumbs coming up to sweep gentle arcs against the skin beneath her eyes and she falters. She really is exhausted, lashes fluttering closed for a second before she snaps them back open.

He looks even more anxious, worrying at his bottom lip, his frown deepening and she doesn’t know why he bothers continuing his examination, but he does. He pulls his hands away from her face and her own falls from his wrist, lands palm open on her lap and she stares at it for a second because she feels a bit cold and shivery without his body heat against her fingers and also oddly vacant.

“Hey, pay attention,” he tells her, but he pulls her wrist towards him anyway and splays her fingers against the beat of his heart and she is suddenly lost to his scrutiny as he fumbles for a pen. She thinks he might be nervous but she’s not sure, too drawn to the shifting muscles beneath her touch and the soft, worn cotton of his shirt. “Head still, follow the pen, yeah?”

She’s half tempted to kick him again because she knows the drill, okay. This is not, in fact, her first brush with brain trauma and also she’s not an fool. Besides, she doesn’t want him to move away from her either, so he brandishes a pen in front of her face and she nods at it, at him, and he huffs a laugh as he catches her chin to hold her still.

He sweeps the pen from side to side in slow, even moves and she follows it best she can when he’s still dangerously close to her, but it’s hard and her mind strays. She considers the tan of his skin, his pink mouth and the damage his scruff could do to her thighs and she wants it, wants it all with him so suddenly and desperately it makes her head swim.

Toby moves again, the pen disappearing back to wherever he found it and he holds his hands up in front of her, palms up, and beckons her forward before he’s got hands at her jaw again and he's burying the tips of his fingers in her hair. She closes her eyes as his fingers trace her scalp and sinks into the sensation as he feels out her bruises, and the way his touch dances feather light against her like a ghost feels _amazing_. She grips his shirt with both hands and pulls him closer until she’s burying her face into the space between his shoulder and his neck and humming against his throat. He laughs and she can feel the vibrations of it against her lips and she presses in further until everything is dark and warm and muted except for the way he speaks softly into her ear.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep on me,” he warns even as he wraps his arm around her waist, pulls her across the empty space between them and into his lap, like staying awake is an option when she wants her bed so much she could maybe weep. She doesn’t have to tell him this though; he just rests his head against her and whispers quiet nonsense words to her and trails his thumb back and forth across her arm and it’s kind of breathtakingly wonderful how well he knows her that he can intersperse his long winded narratives with enough sarcasm and dry wit to keep her from falling asleep. Her body fights him every step of the way, faltering and snapping back awake in fits and starts but he’s just there whenever her focus comes pinging back to attention until eventually there’s not even any real drowsiness left to fight, like she’s so tired she’s come full circle and she can’t move and she can’t think and she also can’t sleep anymore.

She shifts against him, raising her head just a little so she can feel the drag of his beard against her forehead. He moves with her, his hand back against her jaw like it belongs and she eyes him curiously from beneath her lashes.

“Are you okay?”

She nods and butts her forehead against his cheek for no other reason than to feel close to him and she knows intrinsically that any second now, one of them is going to make the plunge and they’re going to kiss, the moment too intimate to _not_ to, and her heart thrums nervously in her chest because of it.

Her stomach feels twisted tight and she’s painfully aware of his every movement and she feels every bit the insecure 15 year old she remembers herself being when he dips his head and noses against her until she finally looks up and their lips meet.

It’s something sweet and soft, and it lingers before they finally part. Happy takes a deep breath that rattles around her lungs and takes stock of the world around her, because yes she’s still sat in Toby’s lap and yes, they definitely kissed but everything else feels unchanged and the world isn’t crumbling to pieces around her and Toby is still looking at her in that terrifying, exhilarating knowing way of his and she thinks, maybe for the first time, that _HappyandToby_ won’t be the end of it all.

So she leans in again and presses their lips back together and she worries for a second about the rhythm of them but he kind of makes every anxious thought irrelevant when he presses more insistently against her and their lips, chapped from the dry heat of Mexico and flying, catch and release and repeat, and when he drags his teeth across her bottom lip, she shudders, the tension she hadn’t known she was carrying falling away as her muscles relax one by one and everything just kind of floats away.

She feels the sharp ache of his scruff rubbing red raw against her mouth and she’s distantly aware of the arm she winds around his neck and the way her hips subtly shift and press against his, but she’s caught up in his mouth and the shared breaths they pass back and forth until she feels like she’s overheating from the inside out.

_“Oh my God!”_

They wrench themselves apart at the horrified interruption and Happy’s heart catches in her throat for a second before she realizes that it’s Sylvester stood over them, flushing and stuttering and apologising all at once and she really doesn’t want to deal with talking about things when she’s still feeling the effects of a pistol whip and heat prickles against the back of her neck, so she just doesn’t.

She goes boneless against Toby and burrows back into the curve of his neck feeling shaky and sweaty and just the tiniest bit hopeful when Toby smoothes a warm hand up and down her spine as he talks to Sylvester.

She’s not supposed to, but his voice is a soothing rumble against her ear and it’s hard to resist the pull of sleep, so she stops trying.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, a wonderful thank you to both [Jenny](www.hero7632.tumblr.com) and [Cassidy](www.happyfuckingquinn.tumblr.com) for their patience and kind words. Any remaining mistakes are my own and you can definitely complain about them or this fic right [here](www.melancholylouis.tumblr.com)


End file.
